BELEAGUERED MOGUL COMPANY Microsoft Corp., Chairman and CEO NETWORTH $85 billion AGE 43 ADDRESSwww.microsoft.com BIO In a lifetime of Olympian peaks, this has been a decidedly mixed year for
the richest man in the world. On the upside: his wife gave birth to their
second baby (a boy), and his personal fortune at one point reached $100
billion. On the downside:Does anyone actually believe that Microsoft will
win its antitrust trial?With his testimony vacillating between belligerence
and Reaganesque forgetfulness, Gates may have done more harm than good to
the monumental company he founded. Yet Microsoft still dominates the
desktop and enjoys revenues and profits rising at a rosy 30% each year,
thanks mainly to the ruthless Genius of Redmond. Indeed, Gates was smart
enough to realize it was time to turn his chief lieutenant, 19-year
Microsoft veteran Steve Ballmer, into the public face of Microsoft. A big,
brash man who yelled so much that he needed throat surgery, Ballmer is the
consummate salesman. With earplugs, the public will love him. Ballmer led a
purge, reorganizing the company this spring and forging a $5 billion deal
with AT&T for a stake in the future of cable Net access. Not that he's a
pushover: some believe it was Ballmer's aggressive tactics as former v.p.
of sales and marketing that first got Gates & company into hot water with
the Department of Justice. BEST LINE "That's the stupidest thing I ever heard!" FORWARD TILT A loss in court could be overturned on appeal. Or maybe a
settlement:Baby Bills would be good for the economy.
